Webstrings: Remy van Kesteren on life & harp
Plans for 2010
2010 is underway, and busy times lay ahead. In two months, the International Harp Competition & Festival of the Netherlands will take place. Preparations are going very well and soon everyone will be able to buy tickets for all the events! I look forward to hearing some of the worlds best harpists, combined with the Netherlands’ finest musicians, playing wonderful music, all in my home town Utrecht! And I can not wait to see if our innovative ideas to create a new sort of Competition will indeed prove to be a success.
Another project for 2010 is to do my Bachelor exam. For the past months, after Israel, I have been thinking a lot about… what’s next? Since for two years, I was basically practising whatever the various competitions required me to, after this huge project I experienced a sort of freedom which was both very liberating and also a little bit confrontational. Because: what do I want? What direction do I want to take, and what sort of music/attitude/life fits to this new direction? Unfortunately, I can not yet provide you with these answers, but I do see the advantages of this contrast with my scheduled, focussed life. Goals are great to get you to a high level, but they can easily prevent you from being open and honest to yourself and your raison d’être as a musician (I am trying to learn French…).
Something else I am thinking about is redecorating this place. Together with an art director I am thinking about ways to get a better, matching look for this website, scheduled to be launched somewhere in March. Also, I want to finally make my first CD, something I have been pondering for a long time now. But in order to do this, obviously I will have to sort out the questions above!
As for 2009; it was a great year. I accomplished my goal and participated in some of the worlds greatest competitions for harp (a status they soon will have to share with the Dutch contest 
). 2010 will definitely mean some away time from them (I might get seriously addicted), but there are a lot of exciting things to come. I’ll keep you posted!